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Rick Howe
Rick Howe (died October 20, 2007) was a small press minicomic creator and zinester (best known for his 1990s zine ''Topical Studies''), a folk music singer-songwriter, and an American poet . Life The details of the birth and early life of Rick Howe are unknown at present. I'm not completely certain of his birthday or date of birth. Either August 9th or 10, near there, and his year of birth was -I'm almost certain- 1950. But I won't be putting any of that in until I verify it with someone who remembers more exactly than I do. Originally from Beaufort, South Carolina, Howe relocated to Columbus, Georgia in 1989, where he was an early member of the Shadowville scene, creating and collaborating on dozens of minicomics and poetry chapbooks, as well as being a founding member, with George Sulzbach and Will Dockery, of the Shadowville All-Stars, then known as the Search Group. In 1966 Howe relocated to Springdale, Arkansas, where he remained for the rest of his life, putting out new issues of Topical Studies and minicomics work from time-to-time, writing, and composing and singing his songs. Death According to the [http://www.wrongplacesaloon.com/memRickHowe.htm Rick Howe Memorial page], Howe passed away in 2007. :On October 20, 2007 the Wrong Place community lost our friend, Rick Howe. We have added a new Memorial Page for him. -Wrong Place website Howe left Columbus, Georgia in 1996 after living here for about 7 years. I first met him through the then-thriving small press "zine" scene of the 1980s, we traded publications for a number of years before he suddenly decided to come here from Beaufort South Carolina. It was an interesting seven years, to say the least. George Sulzbach scanned one of his pieces a while back, what I call a "comix-poem", which gives a good example of Rick's interesting perspective, "Cold December Mist": Cold December Mist Pretty much none of Howe's vast amount of prose, poetry, art, music, political commentary is available online, since he seems to have stuck with his typewriter and never gave into the pressure to "go online". In fact, from the last time I saw him in person, back in Spring of 1996, I was still two years away from getting near the internet, myself. I do have a pretty good collection of his chapbooks, minicomix and zines, so maybe over time I'll be able to get some of that archived. George Sulzbach has a pretty good batch of crumbling cassette tapes of music we three collaborated on in the 80s-90s that I'd sure like to see preserved digitally, as well. We'll see... obviously, none of us know what's really gonna happen next. -Will Dockery Rick Howe sounds like someone both with talent and skill of his own, and also willing to help the talents and skills of others develop -- ie, without the type of ego that sees creativity in others as a threat; something we need far more of. I wish I had met him. -George Dance Publications *''Cold December Mist, a comix poem'' *''Geon, Protector of the Environment'', 1990s, with Will Dockery. *''Symbolman'' 1987. *''Topical Studies'' 1990s-present. Topical Studies was published by former UFO member Rick Howe, who passed away on October 20, 2007. A few of the issue are now available online via the UFO website: TOPICAL STUDIES #3 (September 3, 1992) This issue begins with letters from Ian Shires, J. Kevin Carrier, Michael Neno and Larry Johnson, among others. Rick reviews a ton of small-press zines, and discusses UFO matters upon having received T-Frags #129. TOPICAL STUDIES #4 (November 1, 1992) This issue contains reviews by Rick Howe of several small-press comics; a letters page (including a letter by J. Kevin Carrier) and two short articles by Larry Johnson. TYPICAL STUDIES #3 (February 2002) In this issue, Rick Howe responds to events in the wake of 9-11, reviews Fred Woodworth's The Match! and a book about Aleksander Pushkin, as well as recent music albums. *''Daily Tweet'', 1987. *''Crosscurrents'', the Small Press League memberzine, 1990-1992. *''The Bruno Cult'' Here's a short review I found of one of his comix on the Musea site: The Bruno Cult Comix Reviews The Bruno Cult $6 to Sensitive Records, PO Box 6697, Springdale, AR 72766. Written by Jeff Zenick and illustrated by Rick Howe (two long standing voices among small press circles), The Bruno Cult is a triumphant celebration of a lifestyle as far removed from the shallow materialism of our American consume and go culture as you're likely to find. Zenick writes of his basic, sincere, vagabond existence with integrity. In a world where the pursuit of the almighty dollar seemingly creates legions of lifeless clones living from sitcom to sitcom, Zenick's utopia of a world free of any capitalist motive simplifies and praises a higher truth. Howe's art jives with this life of a man living by his own ideal, where one strips down living to it's fundamentals: hard work as a means of survival, and happiness through simplicity and freedom. Recommended. All ages. 32 pgs. Full comic sized. Professionally printed. Color covers, b/w interior. A review of Rick Howe's zine Topical Studies from 1995. Comic Update, May 12, 1995 (Rick Howe, Paul Quinn) Topical Studies #10, $2.00. Digest, text with illustrations. Rick Howe, 1302 22nd Street, Apartment A, Columbus, GA 31901. Rick Howe publishes little booklets for unborn librarians and Ph.d. candidates. The reason I say this is because I think his Topical Studies zine (his most recent circular), will be a highly prized small press item in 100 years or so. Real thoughts by a real person (a fast food fry cook), conscientiously presented. This is the sort of Americana that historians really appreciate. Plus in his latest issue Rick confesses to raping a minor (pg. 28), so even the purely prurient among you should want a copy. I will wind up leaving Topical Studies #10 at the bus stop, however, as I am (annoyingly) not mentioned in this issue (again). Did you know that bus stops make great display places for your zines? The bus stops around here have a strip of metal along the base of the bench's back. (The side of the bench back which faces toward you as you sit down on it, of course.) I can slip the bottom of a zine into the metal strip. This allows the zine to stand up, and it keeps it from blowing away. I find it very interesting to place a zine out at the bus stop and see how long it remains there before someone picks it up and carries it off. Some zines wind up on the grass and lay there for days. Even the bums don't want them. I would say that the homemade-comics zines are very poorly received, while music and movie titles seem to go quite quickly. As you can see I am once again equipped with a computer. A word to the destitute: there is a major department store in your area that will (foolishly) loan you tons of money to buy the name brand products in their store. Yes, you too can afford a computer. There is no excuse to publish crap that looks like Self Publisher! anymore. A postscript: I wrote the above about nine months ago, although it had not been published until today. Rick Howe has since come out with another Topical Studies, his most outstanding issue yet. I have also been doing more research out at the bus stop. I placed some small press material out there recently, along with some professionally produced newsletters by the nationally known Joe Bob Briggs (reviewed in the May 10th Update). You know what? The small press material (xeroxed home-made comics) got picked up, while Joe Bob languished, eventually winding up ignominiously underneath and behind the bench. No doubt he was eventually picked up...by an illiterate Mexican gardener-dude tossing him into the trash.'' -Andrew Roller'' Poems and Sequential Art *Your Weirdo Boyfriend Your Weirdo Boyfriend Last time I ran into you, Babe -- I can't remember if I had money then or not -- your mind was made up to reject me anyway. At that time I did not know why. One thing I forgot to ask you: is this a wedding or somebody's funeral? I came in off the street, I did not understand why everyone was acting so bummed out. You should not say that I let you down, babe, when it was always you that ran away from me. Now you've got it all worked out, at least you think you do, you and your weirdo boufriend. This guy, you might not think I know him, as I chart through my poor isolated life. But I've run into his like too many times to count, or others identical to him. One day there's going to be a trial where everyone in town has to confess, and explain their motives, and defend what they have done. At least I will be honest on that day. But you, Babe, you're going to wish you had a lawyer, and hope that your star witness backs you up; though strictly from the looks of him, he can't be good for much. But you chose him. I don't know why you chose him. Where did you run into him and what did he do to wreck your mind? Maybe he told you a pack of lies. He is the type to depend on lies. You could have done a whole lot better. But now you're stuck with him, and I know that he thinks he owns you. He's probably the jealous type and sometimes hits you. He's such a creep. This bum that you call your boyfriend; I am concerened about his violent behavior. Like abully on the schoolyard he thinks he makes the rules. I never did like that kind of man. One more thing I forgot to ask you: do you still have the ticket that you said was hidden? Too many women are getting shot these days. We must not underestimate. His gloating lust I cannot bear the thought of. This vulgar brute who surely lacks a conscience. You don't like stupid men and yet this time you picked one. Your worst mistake, your weirdo boyfriend. I'll overlook his low I.Q. but your safety must not be put at risk. You were treacherous to me, But I will always stick up for you. If he wants to fight, by God I'll fight him. But I must be sure that he will leave the guns at home. He has no right to act conceited either. You were way too good for him, he never could deserve you. You can come to me now anytime that you decide to. I guess you've heard I got a new job. We could be together in the end; that's what really counts. Your weirdo boyfriend, that's how I feel about him. -Rick Howe Sequential art refers to the art form of using a train of images deployed in sequenceEISNER, Will, Graphic Storytelling & Visual Narrative, Poorhouse Press, 2001 (1st. Ed., 1996), p. 6 to graphic storytelling or convey information. The best-known example of sequential art is comics, which are a printed arrangement of art and balloons, especially comic books and comic strips. The term is rarely applied to other media, such as film, animation or storyboards. Scott McCloud notes that the movie roll, before it is being projected, arguably could be seen as a very slow comic. Origins of the term - The term was coined in 1985 by comics artist Will Eisner in his book Comics and Sequential Art. Eisner analyzed this form into four elements: design, drawing, caricature, and writing. Scott McCloud, another comics artist, elaborated the explanation further, in his books Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics. Types of sequential art - Sequential art predates comics by millennia. Some of the earliest examples are the cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphics and paintings and pre-Columbian American picture manuscripts, which were recurrent mediums of artistic expression.MCCLOUD, Scott, Understanding Comics, Harper Perennial, 1993, p. 10-16. Wall paintings and hieroglyphs - All the forms of communications since the dawn of human intellect has always served to transmit human experience. Wall painting is the earliest form of graphic communication; it pre-dates written communication and its earliest example are found in caves. Egyptian friezes made more accurate, methodical and organized depiction of their lifestyle through this same medium. Egyptian hieroglyphs codified the images into repeatable and easier to reproduce symbols. In fact the proto-writing and the early alphabets, such as the Egyptian Canaanite alphabet, Chinese and Phoenician, also make clear references to their evolution from wall painting. Rick Howe produced many pages of sequential art, comic strips, minicomix, doodles, sketches, yet so far very few of these have surfaced on the internet. Reviews by Rick Howe Throughout his life, Rick Howe wrote hundreds of reviews, essays, short stories, columns, opinion pieces, virtually ever type of writing imaginable. Most of these are not available online as of yet, but we hope to someday find, collect, and present as many of these as we can for the future generations to enjoy. Here's one that does exist, one of the many critiques and reviews How wrote about his friend, the poet William Dockery. To the Magic Store by Will Dockery Will Dockery's New Poems by Rick Howe''Review from ''Topical Studies #5 (January 1, 1993), by Rick Howe (Subheadings added).. To The Magic Store, just released by Will Dockery, is a publication of modest proportions, consisting of a cover illustration followed by seven pages of poetry. At that, there is something aesthetically effective about this simple minibook design. Having issued a series of similar books over the last several years, the author undoubtedly has aquired a certain proficiency with them. It is probably a question, since one is not sure how else to explain it, of /fitting/ or /filling/ - yet not overfilling - a book of this size with an appropriate amount of material, such that one might experience in it a satisfying ampleness, notwithstanding the smallness of its format; at the same time expression must reach completion in the allotted number of pages, and not leave the impression of having been aborted, or that necessary articulations were left out. Judicious resort to ellipsis may indeed be helpful in this regard only providing it does not signify impoverishment. is not the same thing, really. It is indicative that the book proceeds at what seems, at once, a comfortable, unhurried pace; at the same time it is more than the negligible sort of labor which one might expect in the everyday course of things to have done in fifteen minutes or so. Style - In style and temperment, William Dockery's poetry is a little like that of John Berryman - cf., The Dreamsongs. A basically sensitive but slightly discombobulated awareness wending its way through hazes of intoxication; the neighborhood milieu. [..when I was staying/ at the boarding house/ across from the park,/ I hated those bells/ and I hated that place./ At the same time I loved it. In essence the theme is search for self. Now, self, in the way in which a poet like William Dockery understands it, is essentially a myth; in other words, a kind of story in which self is revealed and delinated to itself. In fact self cannot appear except through the mediation of external places and people. But the important thing is that these must be interpreted as having transcendental implications which might not be apparent at the level of quotidean experience. So this is what is meant by the poet entering his neighborhood or social milieu in search of self. Myth of origin self first learns to recognize itself; golden age, debacle. These are some of the typical mythic components in life. To keep this on a simple, general level. Of course much subtler comprehensions are also possible. For example, a typical mythification involves a division of life into periods. When I lived on such-and-such street, life had a certain quality; I had these experiences, was aquainted with these people, et cetera. Then I moved somewhere else and it wasn't the same; a period of life came to an end. Thus life may be seen as a succession of /periods/ of greater or shorter duration; each more or less distinguished by objective referents addresses, names of people, each revealing distinctive mythological demensions as well. Content - In To The Magic Store the poet is viewing such a period retrospectively. It is a Proustian /rememberance of things past/ in a way; things are remembered together with their psychological associations, producing a sensation of mythological awareness. is not necessary to spell it out with elaborate detail. The point is simply to intuit how a set of associated names and images creates the effect of milieu or era. Viewed retrospectively, there is of course an emphasis on dissolution. People drift away, some die, and eventually the milieu dissolves. The tone of the book is predominantly one of loss and mourning. In one case the poet later revisits one of his main friends - the speed junkie musician Hugo - and finds he'd been burned in a terrible disaster,/ in a wheelchair and speechless. With its emphasis on the downside of the cycle, To The Magic Store corresponds speaking with a decline and fall - maybe not of a /golden age/, since more or less there is only one full-blown golden age in a lifetime, but of some lesser epicycle which never the less exhibits analogous phases of flourishing and decline. Curiously enough, there is no magic store explicitly mentioned in this book. Given the preoccupation with loss and mortality, a suitable title might have been To The Cemetery. Indeed, the climactic verses tell of taking a girl to a graveyard - to see the grave of the guy who died./ We sat there in this graveyard park,/ with a six-pack of beer./ he looked fragile/ as she drunkenly cried./ She looked open/ to my sensibility... But then, as the poem concludes: :I can still remember :her laughing at my poetry :didn't feel so good to me :after I'd been up all night :pouring out my feelings. :I thought she was interesting, :she turned out :she was just a little female fool. :Was not able to put all the components :of my life in place... :my mythology was incomplete. But the title might have a different and more Proustian meaning. The mythology of self, unfulfilled in initial experience to be sure such mythologies inevitably represent inconclusive aspirations, might be prolonged through acts of memory; where by poetic magic they may be perfected and ternalized - notwithstanding their preliminary frustration in mere circumstances. Perhaps this might shed some light on the mystic quality of a poem like The Ballad of James Collier. A line like I hope some of them are left is perhaps best taken at face value, that is, in its natural sense. Other parts of the poem allude to ghostly reunions - perhaps in some transcendental world where the past continues as a permanent reality - In tiny detail. -Rick Howe, Topical Studies #5, January 1 1993. Used by permission. Articles and Reviews referring to Rick Howe *From: COMIC UPDATE #1, August 1, 1986 and COMIC UPDATE #2, August 18, 1986 P.D. Wilson, Waterworld, Dockery Recording Studios. For those of you who have always dreamed of hearing Ian Shires on tape, but can't (since, for one thing, Ian has never thought of the idea), here's something equally stupid. P.D. Wilson, sometime small presser... has released an album of his very own. There are weird sounds here, odd "musical" incantations, and, generally, the sort of music Rick Howe fans are accustomed to being inflicted with. Considering the abyss into which record companies are currently lowering themselves to record "alternative" artists, Wilson should soon have a penthouse to go along with his album. -Andrew Roller, 1986 Poems by Rick Howe #Cold December Mist See also in Columbus, Georgia by Rick Howe.]] *List of U.S. poets *List of English-language songwriters *List of minicomics creators *Minicomic Co-ops *Shadowville All-Stars *Small Press League *Topical Studies *United Fanzine Organization References External Links ;Poems *"Your Weirdo Boyfriend" *Cold December Mist a comix-poem by Rick Howe ;About *Rick Howe Memorial *Topical Studies #12 *Rick Howe at Facebook Category:20th-century poets Category:21st-century poets Category:American poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:People from Beaufort, South Carolina Category:2007 deaths